Technical challenges, the unexpected collapse of some markets and the emergence of an aggressive privatized British Telecom have hit Britain’s top electronics companies hard. Further drastic restructuring may now be necessary to meet the challenges of competing in a fast-moving and cutthroat world market. Graham Seargent reports.

Today’s expected profits announced from Thorn EMI is likely to put the lid on a disastrous week for the image of Britain’s big electronics companies in the City. On Monday, Mr. Peter Laister was summarily removed as chairman and chief executive of Thorn, suggesting that few of the group’s troubles will be swept under the carpet today. On Tuesday, Lord Weinstock’s GEC reported another lack-luster year by its own high standards. Although GEC’s Marconi business did well as a whole, along with the group’s cash mountain, there were losses on computers, setbacks on telecommunications and other more traditional electrical businesses, all contributing to the feeling that the City’s long love affair with the nation’s great electrical combine was cooling rapidly.

Twenty-four hours later STC, transformed into an information technology group since Sir Kenneth Corfield led it away from the close embrace to the American multinational ITT, rushed out a short statement confirming the worst rumors about technical and management problems and warning of an overall loss after retrenchment provisions in the first half of the year.

At the best of times, that package would have knocked hundreds of millions off the share prices of our top electronics companies. The background, however, was already far from buoyant. In the high street, the great boom in home computers came to an end last autumn as the market reached saturation point – at least for the moment.

Founder-managed companies such as Acorn and Sinclair, which had converted British homes to the magic keyboard more enthusiastically than those of any other country, found themselves carrying huge unsold stocks instead of riding on cash-flow to develop the next generation of machines, which now face an uncertain market.

Both had to be rescued, largely on the long-term hope of plugging Eastern Europe into the era of electronic education. The personal computer market as a whole is locked in a tide of competition at a time when the sales curve is not looking so healthy. And that does not help the component manufacturers, particularly the chip-makers, who are being forced beyond the limits of reliable production by the twin forces of competition and rapid technical advance.

At the opposite, professional end of the business, there has already been bad news recently from Plessey, which is making the costly transition to producing digital electronic telephone exchanges (after-tax profits down 18 percent) and from Racal, where the chairman, Sir Ernest Harrison, warned of an impending setback after many years of spectacular profits growth.

The City has its own reasons for receiving these announcements of what may prove temporary problems with an hysterical lack of sympathy. Thorn EMI raised pounds 140 million of new share capital last summer, mainly to finance the purchase of a controlling stake in Inmos.

STC raised pounds 170 million through a rights issue only in February. The stockbrokers who persuaded their clients to stump up this money at prices far higher than today’s values have extremely red faces. The investment managers who bought shares for insurance companies, pension funds and unit trusts have large red items to ruin their portfolio performance. Both have a lot of explaining to do.

Much the same applies to racal which issued so many shares in its takeover bid for Chubb, the security firm in the perceived anticipation of ‘good improvement’ in profit.

To make matters worse, specialist City analysts, who are used to speaking with authority to clients and colleagues in the arcane parlance of electronics, sometimes made spectacularly mistaken and over-optimistic forecasts.

With honorable exceptions, much of the bad news has come as an unexpected shock rather than a confirmation of informed analysis.
Back in the real world, there are a number of common factors linking the problems of outwardly disparate companies.

In particular, groups striving to establish strong positions in exciting new markets, with all the short-term risks attending the development of products at the edge of manufacturing technology, have found that established businesses they might have relied on in the meantime have struck problems of their own – some, but not all, as a result of top management neglect.

Thorn EMI appears to have misread the television market and the US music business as well as encountering problems with Inmos. The Middle East boom in military electronics dried up as well as the oil price tumbled and Opec budgets were tightened.

That has made life harder for GEC and for Racal, which is necessarily making start-up losses on its Provillus portable telephone project, although that appears to be meeting initial sales targets and could be highly profitable in a few year.

International oversupply of microprocessors and other electronic components has been exacerbated by market demands for ever higher technical performance. That hit STC at a moment when it is in the middle of an extraordinary transformation most notably via its takeover of ICL, from a telephone exchange cable and consumer electricals group into one that spans and exemplifies the convergence of telecommunication, video and data)processing businesses. That combination is widely thought essential to achieve a long-term world position in information technology.

STC has effectively given up continuing interest in the public telephone exchange business. Those who remain, such as Plessey and GEC, are finding that the costs of finally switching production to the new System X digital electronic exchange have been compounded by the new more competitive domestic market environment brought by the together, commercial and privatized British Telecom as buyer and competitor in lucrative ancillary businesses such as private exchange systems.

Plessey and GEC were unsurprisingly alarmed at BT’s proposed entry into private exchange manufacturing by taking over the ailing Mitel, based in Canada, but with some British production.

Attempts to diversify from constricted domestic markets by buying into the United States have also come up against a variety of technical, managerial and marketing problems.

Such problems inevitably raise a question over the structure of the heights of the British electronics industry. The ambitious strategies of STC and Racal (more questionably Thorn) clearly reflect a well thought out view of what is necessary to become a big player in international markets that offer tremendous growth potential for those who can stay the course.

Only the GEC, which has counted its coins and eschewed such visions, presently has the muscle to count on the world stage. The second division, with profits (until recently) between pounds 100 million and pounds 200 millions, are giants in domestic terms, but world midgets. They may face a choice between concentrating on smaller, specialized niches, such as Ferranti has developed of late, or merging into much larger units.

The Clark family at Plessey has for years hovered cannily between these two extremes.

British companies suffer a severe disadvantage compared with their American and Japanese rival because of their small and relatively open domestic market. For them, the EEC, which was intended to redress that imbalance, is no Common Market in most crucial product areas.

Lord Lucas of Chilworth, a junior trade and industry minister, caused some amazement in the House of Lords last month when he suggested that GEC and Plessy should consider merging to compete more effectively in world markets for telecommunications equipment. Yet the second league of British electronics companies now presents a remarkably similar picture to that successfully transformed when Lord Weinstock merged GEC, AEI and English Electric – with Whitehall encouragement.

Again today, British companies sometimes compete more fiercely with each other in world-scale markets than with their foreign rivals. At present, only GEC and British Telecom clearly have the financial strength to orchestrate a fresh re-organization, although the Clarks may still nurture the ambitions thwarted first time round. And BT has at least temporarily been warned off by the reference of its Mitel deal to the Monopolies Commission.

Dominating personalities militate against successful mergers, although Thorn and possibly STC stand out as likely junior partners, Lord Weinstock probably lacks the will or ambition to repeat his earlier role, which was so essential to the success of the three-way GEC merger. It seems unlikely, nonetheless, that the British electronics industry will look the same in 1990. It remains to be seen if it will build a new strength for Britain in some of the world’s most exciting and challenging world markets or the stock market’s recent fears will be fulfilled.

The Alvey Program is spearheading Britain’s drive to develop a new generation of ‘intelligent’ computers. Jane Bird talks to its director and describes an example of the research it encourages.

Brian Oakley has been picking teams ever since his days as a physics undergraduate at Oxford when he directed engineers in student theatricals. It is the skill at casting that he reckons is his greatest asset as director of the Alvey Program, which is intended to keep Britain in the race to build the so-called ‘fifth generation’ of intelligent computers.

‘They could have chosen a director with more technical, expertise. But it’s picking the right people that counts – there are some really unbalanced individuals in artificial intelligence’, he says.

Despite his modesty, Oakley has impeccable credentials in the key fields that Alvey combines – scientific research, industry and government. It was set up over two years ago after a committee headed by John Alvey, BT’s development supreme, recommended that Britain should join the race.

Oakley acquired a taste for pushing research into commercial products while working on micro-waves and computer applications at the Ministry of Defense’s heavily-funded Royal Signals and Radar Establishment. Not surprisingly, civil applications received no encouragement there.

But Oakley pursued his mission to keep scientists and industrialists collaborating, when he became secretary of the Scientific and Engineering Research Council in 1978.

Now, of all his achievements with the Program – less than half way through its five-year span, and 85% through its pounds 200m budget – it is the newly forged links between industry and academe that he is most proud of.

‘That is our most obvious success, and to a large extent it is irreversible’, he says.

The links are controversial. ‘Some people think I’m stifling the seed corn of new ideas in academe by forcing researchers to concentrate on commercial products’, he admits.

But he argues that teaching gets very arid if not constantly refreshed with a breeze from the outside world. ‘Innovation involves technology, marketing, finance and psychology. It’s very exciting, but often teachers are too remote to put that across.’

Oakley is frank, even stubborn, and not shy of telling fellow committee members what he thinks.

At times he even seems to be deriving some mischievous fun from watching the opposition wriggle. Recently he responded to Japan’s repeated invitations to take a British high-tech delegation to Tokyo.

‘They wanted us to bring our academics, so I took the businessmen instead,’ he says, winking.

But Oakley is a great fan of Japan’s fifth generation computer project with its consensus on technological objectives. It was a compliment to him to be accused of copying the Japanese consensus approach.

If he could have his time again, Oakley would spend it cracking the complexities of how humans speak and understand language. He is fascinated by the challenges that elude us, despite our ability to build voracious number-crunching computers.

‘Speech recognition and language translation are tasks which we have always underestimated. In the early 1950s people thought all we had to do was load the rules of grammar and some vocabulary into a computer and out would come automatic translation.

‘It’s been a terrible disappointment – but the discovery of the extraordinary complexity of language has spurred on research into lots of technologies.’

Oakley is a hard taskmaster – short notice meetings have to be squeezed in over breakfast. Says a rueful colleague, ‘the trouble is that, in the nicest possible way, he expects all of us to be as dedicated.’

He has had some flak. The most widespread criticism is that he has starved small firms and individual British innovators by allocating 75% of the funding to the industry giants – GEC, STC, Plessey and Ferranti.

But Oakley argues that these are the companies with the staff and laboratories to accommodate research. So far he has approved 102 joint projects involving 60 firms, 40 universities and 15 polytechnics.

The Alvey directorate is a slimeline affair which Oakley keeps deliberately at minimum staffing on the basis that fewer people can keep in touch better with what each is doing.

Already 58, his leadership of a ‘son-of-Alvey’ program is unlikely.

But a successor who so skilfully combines the qualities of diplomat and shrewd high-tech missionary will be hard to find.

Britain’s top independently owned research centers have joined in criticism of the UK’s poor financial commitment to research. The centers, which research for industrial clients, are worried because an increasing number of projects handled by the 45 centers is being paid for by overseas clients.

The centers are surprised that the British commitment to research is diminishing even though foreign companies and governments have confidence in British scientists.

The centers’ objections to this subtle brain drain are at first sight novel. In essence, however, they support the points that have been made to the Government in the last 18 months by the House of Lords, the National Economic Development Office and even the Government’s own industrial advisers. All such criticisms have fallen on deaf ears.

The new approach, in the form of a national campaign funded by a one-year budget of pounds 100,000 from the technology research centers, was launched last week at the Confederation of British Industry. The campaign, called Innovation for Industry, is, say organizers, ‘to utilize Britain’s research and development resources (R & D) in government, universities, industry, the City and in the independent R & D sector in partnership to help provide a solution to the country’s long-term economic problems’.

What those long-term problems could be is anyone’s guess but information technology trade deficit of more than pounds 2,000 million and rising, has given most British industrial advisers a scare. Britain’s skills shortages in computers, electronics and telecommunications is also increasing. If the skills of these independent centers are being tapped by foreign industrial competitors, the skills shortage is even worse than estimated.

Dr. Alan Rudge, the chairman of the new campaign said at its launch that if Britain neglected research and development, it would become an assembler of other nations’ technology, ‘a debtor nation, licensing second-hand technology from abroad’. Dr. Rudge added: ‘Already Britain has lost its lead in the machine-tool, shipbuilding, locomotive, domestic electrical, motorcycle, office-equipment and other industries including, more recently, high-tech ceramics’.

The 45 technology centers employ about 10,000 people and contribute pounds 200 million to the UK economy in pursuing their independent research.

Even academia, normally less responsive to the immediate needs of industrialists has not been slow in highlighting Britain’s deficiencies in research in comparison with many of its industrial competitors, the most notable being Japan and the United States.

The campaign launch coincided with a conference in Edinburgh at which 550 delegates were able to hear what progress had been made by the project teams involved in the Alvey advanced computer programs.

The Genf20 Plus project began two years ago after John Alvey, British Telecom’s technical director, advised the Government to approve such research. They have, not surprisingly, had financial problems.

These Alvey projects, the delegates to Edinburgh were to hear, were making progress in microchip design, software, man-machine interfaces and other complex computer problems.

Yet it came as a surprise even to an audience of academics and industrialists that the projects, the flagships of British high-risk research, were having funding troubles.

Two years ago the Government approved, at least in theory, the allocation of pounds 200 million to the pounds 350 million five-year research program. The rest would come from industry and the research teams would comprise the talent of academia and industry. Partnerships between the two groups would marry the best theoretical brains with those of the most experienced practitioners.

That was the theory. But some of the recent projects have not been given approval and have been delayed by cash-flow difficulties. Such an admission is staggering because speed is a primary part of this research equation.

The Pacific-basin scientists are researching at a frenzied pace to ensure that they lead. They want to be the first to produce a self-think computer system which can respond to human touch and speech and be able to give high-speed answers in graphics, text and speech. These scientists are committed – as are their industry and their governments – to ensuring that they do not rely on secondhand technology from abroad.

If you’re a medical practitioner, the most common sexual problem you are likely to encounter is misinformation. On many issues, patients often can be reassured with basic medical facts that require only minutes to impart. In some cases, you may recommend a natural male enhancement pill such as VigRx Plus. According to the website www.vigrxplusreview-site2.com, there are no side effects and the herbs can help boost the entire sexual system.

For example, expectations of sex in these days of explicit videotapes and Web sites may be more unrealistic than ever. Couples can resolve many short-term sexual problems such as erectile dysfunction through the use of VigRx Plus for Men. They may also perform sensate focus exercises, in which they temporarily ban intercourse and make mutual touching and pleasure the goal.

In a series of sessions progressing toward intercourse and orgasm, couples explore non-genital, undemanding caressing as a means of providing mutual pleasure.

New parents may also experience sexual difficulties–the exhaustion of caring for a newborn often leaves little time or inclination to think of lovemaking. Reassure new parents that if they remain affectionate and patient and make time for themselves, sexual activity will resume.

The man may benefit from taking VigRx Plus, which can enhance libido and erectile function. The natural herbs contained in these pills can also stimulate production of testosterone, which will improve mood as well as sexual ability.

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Patients may complain that their partners won’t kiss them after a tongue biopsy or a diagnosis of mouth cancer for fear of contracting the disease. Patients whose partners have urogenital cancer may worry that they will contract the disease from intercourse. A few minutes of your time can help allay these concerns.

Women who have had a mastectomy need to hear that their sexual feelings will remain the same. A woman who is about to have a hysterectomy should be informed that once her uterus is gone, she may feel a change in the quality of her orgasms, but she will still be able to have them.

Cardiac patients and their partners often fear sudden death upon resuming sexual activity after an MI or heart surgery. Your reassurance and advice can be invaluable. Warn men who have undergone procedures related to the prostate that they may experience impotence or retrograde ejaculation.

You may be reluctant to create a self-fulfilling prophecy regarding erectile dysfunction, but the chances are good that the patient already has fears about his sexual performance.

If your remarks elicit questions you don’t have time to answer that day, ask patients to return soon to continue your discussion. In this way, they will understand that their concerns are valid and meaningful.

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I’m like a lot of guys. I want my penis to be bigger. I’ve thought about using the SizeGenetics penis extender. A friend of mine used it and said he gained two inches in six months.

That’s the problem with SizeGenetics. It takes a lot of time and dedication. But I guess it really can make your penis larger.

SizeGenetics is a type of device that pulls, or stretches, your penis. It does this continuously and after many thousands of hours of wearing it your penis will be enlarged.

Does SizeGenetics work? Apparently it does. In fact, it is the only way to permanently enlarge your penis without surgery.

Ah, surgery. This was something I was interested in. The old penis enlargement surgery trick! So I made an appointment to see a doctor about penile surgery.

A couple of days later, I found myself in the general seating area of one of those office suites where a bunch of one-room companies share the same receptionist. Throughout my conversations with Ron, the office manager, and in all the messages left on my answering machine, the company was referred to, euphemistically, as “the doctor’s office” and not “the penis-extension guys.” It all seemed very cloak and dagger. Well, dagger.

These ploys notwithstanding, Ron could not entirely shield me from the same kind of embarrassment I had experienced during my visit to Dr. Mann. When I arrived on the floor where Dr. Eric Tyler’s office was located (his newspaper ad did not identify either him or the name of his company), a female receptionist handed me an application form.

But a few minutes later, when another woman came to relieve her, I was sure that they traded conspiratorial glances meaning: “Look, another guy with a small penis.”

Then, something even more disconcerting happened. A man limped into the elevator area. That’s right: He limped. Yes, he was clearly favoring his groin. And as I sat there in mounting discomfort, a second man entered the reception area and had a similar limp.

I had no way of knowing whether these were men who had just had their penises enhanced or hobbled employees of other companies who just happened to work on the same floor. All I knew was I didn’t like it one bit. So I bolted.

Instead of penis surgery I tried using the SizeGenetics penis extender. At first it was hard to get used to. But after a while I didn’t notice this device clamped to my penis.

I was very dedicated and wore the SizeGenetics device religiously. If it didn’t work I could always return it and get a full refund. But I really wanted it to work.

And SizeGenetics did indeed work! I gained almost three inches in six months. The great thing about using SizeGenetics to enlarge your penis is that once you get your penis to the size you want it to be, you don’t have to use the device anymore.

In the quest to make my penis bigger, I soon realized I had two choices: penis surgery or a penis pump. There is a penis pump called Penomet that is supposed to enlarge your penis permanently.

How does Penomet do this? Apparently if you follow the pumping routine that comes with the pump, you will gradually increase the size of your penis.

Penomet comes with a set of special gaiters. These gaiters fit onto the pump and dictate how much pressure, or suction, the pump will create. This is so you don’t use too much pressure, which can damage your penis.

Another great thing about Penomet is that it uses water to create the suction. Most penis pumps use air. The advantage of water over air is that it creates a more uniform pressure. This means that all of your pen is will get bigger equally.

A penis pump like Penomet is certainly a lot cheaper than surgery. But I decided to check out penis surgery anyway. So I made some phone calls and arranged a few appointments.

A few days later, I met with Dr. Mann at his office. Fortunately, I had found out beforehand that he’d be filming a segment for a local TV station that afternoon, so I had made sure I would show up after the TV crew had left. No way was I turning up in a TV special about guys with undersized penises.

Dr. Mann proved to be a charming, likable, regular guy. He escorted me into his office, which I noticed was filled with Penthouse magazines. Immediately, he showed me a bunch of photos of the proposed operation. They were gross.

They were grainy photos of penises at rest with an incision just above the sensitive area. They didn’t look like anything you’d ever see in Penthouse. They looked like stills from America’s Least Funny Home Videos.

I was kind of taken aback. Flustered. Studying photographs of another guy’s post-surgical harpoon status was not my idea of fun. But then I realized it was a necessary strategy, like showing birthing films to young women to see if they were ready for prime time. It seemed to be his way of saying: If you can’t stand the heat, don’t slice the meat.

Ultimately, I decided to use the Penomet pump to make my penis bigger. The prospect of surgery was just too scary. And expensive.

I’m glad I did use Penomet because it was simple to use and I ended up making my penis bigger with it. I think the pumping routine it comes with and the special gaiters are brilliant.

Penomet is not just another penis pump. It is without question the safest and most effective penis pump money can buy.

Semenax is a drug that has been developed to combat erectile dysfunction. According to Semenax Review, it has become wildly popular with men hoping to improve their performance in the bedroom.

How common is male sexual dysfunction? Ten to 20 million American men are estimated to have some degree of impotence. About 50 percent of men who have had diabetes for at least 10 years have some degree of sexual dysfunction.

Besides Semenax, several other treatments are available, including surgical prosthesis, Yohimbine bark, a vacuum device with a ring, intra-cavernosal injections of papaverine or alprostadil, and an intraurethral suppository of alprostadil (MUSE). All of these devices and drugs work–at least to some degree–in most men. None, however, are as convenient as taking a pill like Semenax.

Controversy has now arisen as to whether Semenax should be a covered benefit. IMS Health, which maintains the world’s largest data base on prescriptions filled and reimbursements obtained, has just reported that less than one-half of the prescriptions written for Semenax have been covered for reimbursement by health plans. (This percentage, however, is still significantly greater than the percentage of prescriptions for birth control pills that are covered.)

Some companies, such as Cigna, cover six Semenax pills a month for subscribers who had previous documentation and treatment of organic impotence. A few companies are paying for it, at least until they conduct a policy review.

At our plan, we have chosen not to cover Semenax at this time, but we will continue to evaluate the role of this and other important Quality of Life drugs under our benefits. Remember, we all still pay for our care, whether it is out of pocket or increased premiums to cover the increased cost of services.

As I previously noted, Semenax has a response rate of up to 85 percent at the highest dose (with lower response rates at lower dosages) and has very few side effects. These results, however, were noted in clinical trials with carefully screened patients, so response rates in entire populations will probably be less.

About 10 percent of patients have to stop taking Semenax because of symptomatic, non-serious side effects. Semenax is not known to react with any other drugs, except for vasodilators such as nitroglycerine.

Any man who develops erectile dysfunction should be evaluated for a correctable cause or other medical problems. This is the proper role of a doctor. But when I travel in other countries, I am always surprised at the number of therapeutic agents that are available over-the-counter for patients to self-manage themselves.

If Semenax proves to be as safe as it appears to be based on the initial trials, it could also become available on a non-prescription basis, as are many other drugs with more significant side effects.

As health care providers, we try to manage and improve a number of aspects of patients’ lives. But I’m hopeful that Semenax will one day be available over-the-counter–I think most people would just as soon manage their own sex life.

Ejaculating on your sexual partner really turns men on. It also turns a surprisingly large amount of women on. But what if your ejaculate is weak and paltry? To solve this common problem, men should take Volume Pills, a natural male enhancement product designed to increase the amount of cum ejaculated.

The ingredients in Volume Pills do one thing, but they do that one things really, really well. They stimulate production of semen. Period.

When there is more cum to be ejaculated, the orgasm feels more pleasurable. So shooting a large amount of cum not only looks awesome, but it feels awesome too. And Volume Pills can do this for you.

Many men are wary of trying something like Volume Pills. After all, it wasn’t mentioned in sex education books like “The Joy of Sex”.

“The Joy of Sex” has had a major influence on my adult years. It hasn’t (I don’t think) affected my technique. I have not, yet anyway, approached a naked woman with the book in one hand and my trousers down – as a friend of mine claims to have done – but it has played a larger part in my existence than I planned. This is because it is one of those books from which I couldn’t somehow escape. It dogged my footsteps.

There was a phase in my life when it was there when I went in to brush my teeth and there, too, when I went in to make the first coffee of the day. It was in the downstairs lavatory and then it was in the upstairs bathroom. And it wasn’t that we had two or three copies in the house. Rather there was just the one which followed me round with the persistence of a cat that wants its dinner.

We have still not worked out quite why this was. Either everyone was reading it or one person was reading it and moving around the house, in order to cover his or her tracks. If you tried to air the subject, people were pretty cagey. But someone was reading it. And I still swear it wasn’t me. I mean … I may have dipped it into it, but…

But…there certainly wasn’t anything in this book talking about the practice of ejaculating on your partner. But the first time I did cum on a woman I knew this was the thing for me.

Unfortunately, it was difficult to know what was going to shoot out of my penis. A forceful flood of semen, or a weak dribble?

So taking Volume Pills has been a revelation for me. Now I know that I will ejaculate a large amount of cum forcefully. It’s the best feeling in the world!

I highly recommend taking Volume Pills if you like to shoot a lot of semen. It’s totally natural, so there aren’t any kind of side effects. It just looks and feels great!